This invention relates to news feeds in social networking systems and in particular to using machine learning for ranking news feed stories in social networking systems.
A social networking system typically has access to large amount of social information describing actions performed by users that may be of interest to other users of the social networking system. A user is likely to be interested in learning about actions performed by other users connected to the user in the social networking system. These actions include, photo uploads, status updates, transactions, wall posts, posting of comments, recommendations, likes indicated on other users' photos, videos, and the like. The social networking system stores other types of information that is likely to be of interest to a user, for example, activities related to social groups or events represented in the social networking system. The social networking system presents social information as news feed stories, also referred to herein as stories, the news feed, or feed stories.
Since a user may be connected to several other users of the social networking system and may be interested in multiple social groups and events, there can be several stories generated on a regular basis that may be of interest to the user. However, the user may have more interest in certain stories compared to others. Users prefer to see stories that they are more interested in compared to stories that they find less interesting when they interact with the social networking system.
A social networking system that presents interesting stories relevant to each user is more likely to ensure that users are loyal to the social networking system and visit it on a regular basis. Furthermore, users presented with interesting stories are more likely to interact with the social networking system, for example, to comment on the stories or to recommend or like a story. This in turn creates more content which may be of interest to other users. Also, actions performed by other users related to stories created by a user provide encouragement for the user who created the story to post more content. A social networking system that provides information of interest to users and distributes the information to the people that are most interested in the news, attracts more users to the social networking system.
If a social networking system has a large user base that is loyal, businesses are more likely to advertise their products and services on the social networking system. Advertisements from businesses provide revenue to the social networking system. Therefore, the ability of a social networking system to determine relevant stories of interest to its may be tied to the revenue earned by the social networking system. However, determining which stories are of interest to a user can be challenging because a large number of factors may determine whether a user finds a story interesting or not.